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New Covid wave has begun and masks should be worn again, scientists warn
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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But fuck it, let's all just return to the office anyways. Amirite? SMH
Well yeah. If we don't the landowners will lose money on all their ugly and useless office buildings and that would be sooo awful :(
But if they lose money they can't invest it and create jobs.
Oh, I forgot, the wonderful trickle-down-economics. /s
Give the rich more and we will all benefit from it some day instead of creating social security and subsidizing education by fairly taxing everyone equally and without exceptions and loopholes.
My comment was 10,000% sarcasm. Of course they don't add jobs, trickledown economics is a complete crock of shit lol
Bahahaha I felt that I didn't have to add /s to the end of that, I was obviously wrong..
it got me, too tbh. There's too many people who actually think this :/
I wonder how much of the wave is due to return to office
How many people haven't returned? My company, and nearly everyone I know has been back for 2 years.
My company only started cracking down on it a couple months ago. Nominally the majority of employees were supposed to be working in the office three days a week as of April 2022, but most of the roles don't require physical presence so people just kept working from home. Now the company has shifted to tracking badge data to make sure people are actually coming into the office, despite three years of data demonstrating we're just as productive as home...
It's not totally clear yet. My role is fully remote, so the info I have is second-hand from memos and word of mouth. The company has apparently been using an automated system to send scary emails to people not badging in (with their manager CCed), but I don't know what happens if you just ignore those. Memos have made vague threats of implications for performance reviews, but those haven't happened yet since they announced they would be tracking badge data.
Here in Norway there was a marked shift to acceptance for more home office post-Corona. We did have stricter and longer restrictions than you guys though, and basically things didn't go back to normal until winter 2022. At my work I'd say 80% do home office at least 1 day per week, and 30% do home office 4/5 days in the week (we have one mandatory office day per week). I'd also say that a few percent have taken that opportunity to do "quiet quitting" and essentially do nothing (joining meetings from the car in the middle of the day on their way to IKEA and stuff like that, never engaging in or starting initiatives by themselves etc.), but that's on management for not getting rid of them.
Personally I still go 5/5 days by own choice, because I live right next by, prefer the ritual of switching into job/focus mode that it is to walk to the office, and like sitting in a separate place that has no distractions (compared to home, where I would take 5 minutes to do the dishes, take an extended trip to the grocery at lunch, etc) and that my brain only associates with working.
In the UK at least, most people I know who work in an office can choose to WFH or do hybrid working. I do hybrid by choice, I don't want to WFH full time.
Just in time with school starting back up too for kids. A lot have already gone back, hence where I think the spike patterns originate.
Not sure about other countries, but at least in Europe we had quite a few comments, including by health officials, that the school closures should not have been done and upheld to the extent that they were.
And I agree, the impact on learning and children's mental health was not justified by the real or potential dangers of the pandemic imho
Edit: One comment from the German Health Minister here, describing prolonged school closures as a mistake
Meanwhile in Asia we moved lessons to zoom for a few weeks and that was it. But Germans think giving kids a tablet or notebook is exposing them to the devil
In many places schools weren't even really 'closed'. The number of failures stacked on top of failures is staggering. Nobody who matters will be held to account. Most westerners won't want to accept it but China's response was near flawless in comparison. And their economy continued to grow throughout. Albeit at a lesser rate. The west plunged itself into recession which it then reframed it's way out of and still hasn't recovered properly.
They don't say that. They said the extent of closures was inappropriate for the severity of the pandemic and the role of schools.
And Germany did quite well during COVID, per capita deaths are far lower than, for example, in the US, UK, Italy, or France.
I mean, comparing countries with it's peers is what you should do. I could also have taken Argentina, Bulgaria, or Russia, but at the end you'll see that Germany did fairly well.
I think the question is somewhere how much death we accept against the impact of avoiding it. In this case, as I said before, there seems increasingly the opinion that school closures as a measure did not have the impact that justified its extent of use.
I feel like you only read half my comment each time.
You will always reach a point of diminishing marginal returns with measures taken, and you have to evaluate the impact of the measure against it's effectiveness.
The argument is that school closures likely did not contribute sufficiently to justify their extent of implementation, meaning you probably would have wanted a few more people dying to avoid the shortfalls in children's education and socialisation that you have now. The ends, in retrospective, arguably did not justify the means.
You are not reading my comments. The closures did not reduce deaths/infections by enough to justify having them, that is the argument.
Get over it. COVID is a lot more minor than anyone made out to be. Have you not had it yet? You will if you haven’t. And then you will get over it like a cold. COVID is over for good.
Don't be so dense. Maybe for you it was fine but my dad has never been the same since, and he had covid 18 months ago.
I'm young(ish), fit and healthy and I was ill for 6 weeks. I don't know how you could be unaware of its effects after all this time.
Except for the million that died.
Nonsense, it is a novel virus, effects can vary widely. I got it for the first time last Christmas and my heart still hasn't recovered, dizzy spells after climbing stairs or bending over.